


Everyday Electricity (the Everyday Travesties remix)

by othersideofthis (hikaru)



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Established Relationship, M/M, Remix, Science Fiction, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 12:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10593840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikaru/pseuds/othersideofthis
Summary: Nick and Kyle met in the North. They were just kids, but when they saw each other, they knew.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ionthesparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Everyday Travesties](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7314208) by [ionthesparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/pseuds/ionthesparrow). 
  * Inspired by [Battery & Builder](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6635728) by [ionthesparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/pseuds/ionthesparrow). 



> this fic went through many incarnations before it took this form. (attempted, but abandoned, ideas, include fic from the perspective of the Right Whale.) it is, shall we say, a feelings remix, rather than a remix in the strictest sense of the world.
> 
> readers should also give ionthesparrow's phenomenal 'battery and builder' a read, since it is one of the best things i've ever read, and also this remix is also a crossover with that universe.
> 
> thanks to everyone who helped make this fic. thanks to ionthesparrow for writing amazing, world-shaking, tear-inducing things.

The Tower coming down catches Nick by surprise. He’d heard rumblings, of course, when people would pass through: rumors of rebellion. But he hadn’t believed them.

Nick had grown up calling it the Sun Tower: the sun at its daily apex nestled itself among the arches at the top of the building, looking like a glowing orb atop a scepter. Sun Tower was always a majestic column rising up out of the nothingness of the surface, and now he watches it crumble, glass panes bulging out between trembling metal arches before they shatter, hurling glass shards down on anyone unlucky enough to be working below.

“Huh,” Kyle says, stopping his work in favor of turning in the direction of the chaos. He pulls up his goggles up for a second, squinting into the distance, his work forgotten.

Several encampments away, an alarm stutters to life, a low, lonely wail cutting across the desert. Kyle pulls his goggles back down.

They stand in silence, watching the metal twist and groan and finally come down. “You think they’ll rebuild?” Nick asks, once the dust in the distance started to clear, leaving only the jagged remains of twisted, charred metal marring the landscape.

“Of course,” Kyle says, like it’s obvious, like there’s no other choice. He turns away from Nick; Nick feels a telltale tug at the back of his mind that says that Kyle has gone back to work, siphoning the smallest amounts of energy away from him. “What other choice is there?”

Nick thinks that there are lots of choices. They could stop building entirely, they could build smaller, more manageable towers, they could relocate people from the Sun Tower to Twilight Tower or that half-built one that Nick hadn’t gotten around to picking a name for yet. They could send everyone back to where Nick and Kyle had come from, even. Plenty of space left, back up North. Habitable, even, if you didn’t mind the cold.

But there was a reason Kyle was so loved by the Monitors, back before they were taken to Twilight Tower, and it certainly didn’t have much to do with Kyle’s creative mind. No, they loved Kyle because Kyle loved rules and order and facts, and because Kyle was good at building but even better at building what he was _told_.

So of course Kyle would think that they would rebuild. Of course he would.

* * *

Kyle and Nick have had years out here in the wild. Far more years than they’d expected, when Twilight Tower trained them and then said, “go and work, we’ll find you when we’re ready”, and then turned them out.

Every so often, someone from the Tower would come see them, give them something new to build. None of the assignments ever made sense. They were building pieces for machines they’d never see, weapons they’d never fire. Someone would come in, drop off a piece of metal unlike anything Nick had ever seen before, and tell them to make a thousand.

And so that’s what they did. In their own little house that they built themselves, they still did as they were told.

Day in, day out, exactly what they were told. No more and no less.

They weren’t made for the surface this far South, neither of them. The first few years outside of the Tower were a shock. The barren landscape is endless: miles and miles of dirt and sand with nothing to hold it down, so it whips up in your face the second even a light breeze gets going. Nick estimates he’s probably eaten just as much sand over the years as he has protein packs. They’ve at least got the same consistency, so maybe it doesn’t even matter all that much, in the end.

But out on the surface, the sun beats down on you, almost relentlessly, and then faster than you can blink, the sun goes down and everything’s shrouded in darkness.

Up North, it was dark more often than not, especially after the weather patterns started to change. Nick remembered times when the snow stopped, the flowers bloomed, the rivers ran freely. By the end—by the time they went to the Tower—it wasn’t like that anymore. It was just an endless landscape of snow and ice. That’s why the Tower appealed to them. _We’ll teach you_ , they said, _teach you both to use those beautiful powers of yours_. But almost more importantly, _we’ll feed you and clothe you and keep you safe from harm. Wouldn’t you like that? Knowing where your next meal is coming from? Knowing you won’t freeze to death out there? Knowing you’ll be with other people like you?_

Kyle had looked to Nick. Nick had looked to the Monitors.

Nick said yes.

Sometimes, Nick wonders if they made the right choice. He wonders if maybe they should have stayed on the surface, fended for themselves. Accepting the Tower’s training was good right up until it wasn’t, right up until they got sent back out into the same world they were trying to escape.  

It probably wouldn’t have been much of a life, but it would have been theirs.

* * *

After the Tower falls, they wait.

Kyle keeps track of the days, tallying each rise and fall of the sun in a neat column alongside the doorframe.

It’s more days than they’ve ever needed to count before—more days than it’s ever been in between visits from the Monitors, or assignments delivered to them, or merchants coming through to sell them food.

It’s enough days that Nick worries that Kyle is going to run out of room. Nick imagines the tally marks creeping across the walls, one day after another, scratched out, as they wait for something to happen.

They wait, but no one ever comes. Nick is sure down in his bones that no one is _ever_ coming.

No one wants draw them back to Twilight Tower to see what they can do to help rebuild. No survivors from the collapse of Sun Tower are coming to them, looking for their own way to start over.

They are—as they most often are, and have almost always been—completely, utterly alone.

So when it’s been long enough, when they’re sure no one is coming for them, Kyle nods at the bags they’ve kept packed at the foot of their bed.

“It’s time,” Kyle says. And Nick knows better than to argue with him over that.

And so Nick and Kyle start walking.

* * *

In the end, Travis and Lawson find them first, in the middle of the wasteland.

They all startle each other, when they cross paths. It’s fair, really; for Nick and Kyle, it’s been days and days of endless dirt and wind and _nothing_. They’d been hoping to come across any other signs of life but Nick, at least, had been resigned to the fact that he and Kyle might be the last two people left alive anywhere.

Nick thinks immediately, before anyone even says anything, it’s like looking at a different version of him and Kyle, and he doesn’t know what to do with that.

Lawson, tall and blonde and sturdy, an easy smile on his face once the shock melts away.

Travis, small and compact and wary, one arm thrown across Lawson’s chest, holding him back.

Kyle, Nick notices, is doing practically the same thing.

The air crackles around them. Nick can feel more than see the barrier that gets thrown up in front of Travis and Lawson. It’s a nice piece of energy work, even if it doesn’t feel like anything they’d ever learned how to do in the Tower.

“Who are you?” Kyle asks.

“Who are _you_?” Travis counters.

Nick pinches the bridge of his nose.

Lawson, on the other side of that hastily created wall of energy, does the exact same thing.

“What have I told you,” Lawson mutters, “about being like this?”

Travis doesn’t answer, but a smile tugs at the corner of Lawson’s mouth. The wall of energy goes down, and Travis’ posture softens, but he still leaves his hand brushed up against Lawson’s chest.

“Who _are_ you?” Kyle repeats, unswayed by whatever interpersonal drama is unfolding before them.

“I’m Lawson,” he says, “and this is Travis, and we’re from the Tower. Or, we _were_ from the Tower, I guess.” Lawson grins. Crooked. A little shy.

Nick likes him already.

* * *

Lawson and Travis are, indeed, from the Tower. They have a story to tell, one that seems unbelievable no matter how many times Nick hears it. Lawson and Travis tell them a story of lies and revolution, mysterious arrivals and fear. Bonds, fried and severed and broken. Destroying the Tower so they could save everyone else.

Kyle flinches every time Lawson talks about burning out, breaking bonds.

“They let us work in peace,” Nick says. “We  never had to be afraid of that. They never made us feel like they were going to—” From the corner of his eye, Nick sees Kyle’s hands clenched tight on top of his thighs, fingers digging in so tight and so sharp.

Nick tries to imagine what it would be like if their bond was severed. If someone forced Nick to use himself up for some crusade they didn’t think they even believed in.

Kyle, he imagines, would find a new bond pretty quickly. People always seem to like Kyle, no matter how prickly he tries to be. Maybe he’d find someone better than Nick. Someone stronger, more creative, better at directing his energies in the right way.

Nick—well, his mind would be a buzzing, hissing blank space, static where there should be life and sound. Where there should be _Kyle_.

But Kyle would be okay.

“It was never like that, for us. They trained us, and they sent us away,” Nick adds. “We built pieces for their machines, that’s all. They didn’t want us for—for any of that.”

“I guess we’re still learning about the other Tower,” Lawson says. “But the important thing is, we’re going to make sure that what they tried to do to us can’t happen again.”

There’s no room for argument there. Even if things were different for Nick and Kyle—they can’t disagree with what Lawson wants to do.

Lawson hands them each a stack of clothes and some food rations. Their discussion is over. “We’ll set you up with a tent,” he says, then beckons Travis over.

Travis consults a list scrawled on a worn scrap of paper. That alone makes Kyle and Nick exchange glances; paper’s harder to create than anything they’d ever been taught how to make in the tower.

“We’ve got some space left, on the east end,” he mutters, drawing the tip of his finger down the page. “You want a tent together?”

Kyle looks at Nick. Nick looks back, lifts his hands, palms up. Nick knows what his answer is. He doesn’t know what Kyle’s is going to be.

“Sure,” Kyle says, like he’s forcing it out, like even giving away that smallest bit of personal information is killing him.

Travis smiles and flips his paper over, checking some notes on the back side. “Two bunks or one?”

Kyle sucks in a breath; Nick goes very, very still.

Travis asks it so casually, like it’s a completely normal question.

“What do you mean?” Kyle asks. His voice is barely above a whisper.

Travis looks back up from his paper, brows furrowed. “We don’t have many double bunks left. At least, not until Adrian and Paul get back in a couple days. They’re best at building that. You don’t want Law and me trying to split one bunk into two.” Travis folds the paper back up and slips it into his pocket.

“Last time we tried, we trashed it.” Lawson offers an apologetic shrug. “Something about dividing up the cotton, I just can’t get it right.” He scrubs one hand through his hair. “Anyway, we put that one back together and now TK and I use it.”

“It’s real lumpy,” Travis says. “No one else should have to sleep on that, so we do.”

Kyle’s eyes get a little bit wider.

“So if you’re not—” Travis lets his words trail off, then gestures, first at Nick and Kyle, then at himself and Lawson. “I know the camp isn’t the greatest, so I want to make sure everyone’s comfortable.”

“Comfortable,” Nick says, like he’s sounding out the word for the first time.

“Well,” Travis says. “As comfortable as this place can be, at least. I wouldn’t split up couples, if I have the beds to manage it.”

“Wait, you—” Kyle’s whole face does something strange. “You—?” And then he stops.

Travis squints. “Aren’t most pairs?” He tilts his head then. “I’m sorry, did I— is it different, up North? Is it not—?”

Nick feels like they’re all having different conversations. Nick wishes someone would just finish a damn sentence.

“Oh.” Kyle says. Maybe Kyle doesn’t need Travis to finish any of his sentences.

He sounds so small. So afraid. Just one syllable, a lifetime of fear.

* * *

See, the thing is this:

Nick and Kyle met in the North. They were just kids, but when they saw each other, they knew.

Kyle had a family, then. An actual family: a mother and a father and some brothers, even.

Nick didn’t really know what that was like, not really. He supposed he had parents, but he didn’t remember them. What Nick remembered was a lifetime of longing, a feeling that gnawed at his stomach, telling him that he wasn’t complete, that he was missing something very important—missing some _one_ very important, and when he met Kyle, all of that went away, and he knew.

No one up North talked about Building, not in the way they talked about it at the Tower. Not in the way that Travis and Lawson talk about it. They could all do it, of course, everyone knew that they could do anything if they put their minds to it. But they didn’t have words for it.

Lots of people up North were bonded. Kyle’s parents were, for sure. One of his brothers was bonded, with a family of his own. Assorted Raus, all bonded together.

No words for it, but they made it work.

Bonded pairs everywhere, but—

When Nick met Kyle, Nick _knew_.

It wasn’t just building. It wasn’t just creating things together. It was—

Nick felt complete.

He had locked eyes with Kyle and Kyle had—very gently, very tentatively—rested one hand against Nick’s arm, and Nick _pushed_ and Kyle _pulled_ and—

Bonded pairs everywhere, but none of them looked like _them_.

And sometimes, up North, being different—it just wasn’t done, is the thing.

* * *

“Oh,” Kyle says again.

“One bunk is fine,” Nick says.

“Great!” Travis grins, like there wasn’t this moment of tension that just snapped. He pulls his list back out. “We’ll put you on the east end of camp. It’s quiet there. Come on.”

And that’s how Nick and Kyle got a tent together, with one bed, surrounded by people who didn’t think that was different at all.

* * *

On the walk over, Travis tells them about the camp. He and Lawson hold down the central corridor, with their tent literally in the center of camp. “It makes us easy to find,” Travis says, “when people need us. Just walk to the middle, and there we are.”

Someone named Mike organizes the south end, and there’s a Jeff to the north. Travis mentions them in the same breath, like they’re one entity, then adds, “but we don’t put new arrivals on either of those ends if we can avoid it.”

That’s weird, and vague, but Travis doesn’t elaborate. Instead, he just barrels forward. “We move most of our unbonded arrivals into the west side,” Travis explains. “Kids, mostly. A lot of them came from the Tower, so we’ve got some dorms set up, make it feel like home.”

Which leaves the east side of camp.

“This is Jonathan,” Travis says, introducing them to a man who looks bored or tired or both, really.

“It’s Jonny,” he says, to Nick and Kyle, before turning back to Travis. “They’re new. Why have you given them to me, Travis? What am I going to do with two more people?”

Nick blinks. Kyle makes a noise low in his throat that might pass for a growl.

“This is Nick and Kyle and they’re bonded,” Travis says, “so Mike will hate them, and Jeff is—” Travis flaps his hand in the air in lieu of actually putting a word to however Jeff _is_.

Jonny snorts, though, so he apparently understands exactly what Travis is trying to get at.

“So they’re yours,” Travis finishes. “My list says you’ve got tent twenty-seven open, so they can go there.”

Jonny looks over his shoulder, back at the row of tents behind him. “So it is.” He turns back to Nick and Kyle. “Where did you come from?”

“South,” Nick says. “About a week’s worth of walking, at least, until we found Travis.”

“And before south?”

“Twilight Tower.”

Jonny laughs. “Twilight, fuck. I didn’t think anyone called it that anymore.”

“Well,” Kyle says sharply, “we do.”

“Well,” Jonny says, tilting his chin up. “So you do. And before Twilight?” His voice drips sarcasm as he drawls out the name.

“North.”

Jonny lifts one eyebrow. “That’s not easy, the North.”

“No,” Kyle folds his arms over his chest. “It isn’t.”

They’re silent, all of them. Jonny stares at them like he’s sizing them up. Nick shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot. By the complete lack of reaction from Travis, Nick’s guessing that Jonny’s always like this.

“Well,” Jonny says again. “Come on then, Nick and Kyle, long gone from the North, I have room for you.”

* * *

That first night, Nick doesn’t think either of them sleep. Kyle stays flat on his back, sighing heavily every so often, at close enough intervals that Nick eventually rolls over to deal with it.

“What?” he asks. He settles one hand lightly on top of Kyle’s, which are clasped on his chest.

Kyle says nothing at first. Nick counts his breaths, the number of times their hands rise and fall together.

“Do you think,” he starts, then trails off. He looks up at the top of the tent, stares hard at it. The canvas shifts before Nick’s eyes, fading away to become a window up to the sky.

The sky is clear. No clouds. No sandstorms. Just stars.

It’s almost like being home.

“Do you think this is where we’re supposed to be?” Kyle asks finally. “Do you think we belong here?”

“Does it matter?”

Kyle tilts his head to the side to look at Nick. “Why wouldn’t it?”

“We’re here now,” Nick says. “We’re safe. Even if it’s not where we’re supposed to be, isn’t it better than being out there? Alone? Dying?” Nick rolls closer, rests his chin on Kyle’s shoulder. Kyle, at least, doesn’t pull away.

“What if there was somewhere else?” Kyle asks. “What if there’s something we’re missing?”

Nick doesn’t know that they belong anywhere. Their bond was too strange for the North, their skills weren’t quite right for Twilight Tower, and now their whole world’s in chaos, all because of the heap of smoldering rubble that used to be the Sun Tower.

“They like us,” Nick says. “They want to help us. Why not stay?”

Kyle rolls away. “What if there’s something else?” His body curls in. The makeshift skylight fades away, shrouding them in darkness.

Nick presses his fingertips to the back of Kyle’s neck.

What if there’s something else? Nick doesn’t even know if he cares.

* * *

No one asks them to build anything in camp. That’s the first strange thing.

“You can, if you want,” Lawson tells them. “Most of our pairs do. But you don’t have to, not until you’re ready.”

It’s been so long since Nick’s felt like he’s had any choice in his life whatsoever. And Kyle—Kyle’s entire life has been what his family wanted, and what the Tower wanted, and then what Nick wanted.

So they do nothing. For the longest time, they do nothing.

It’s a choice. It feels nice.

* * *

There’s a whole slew of tent poles that snapped overnight, victims of high winds and stress on load-bearing points; Nick’s eyes glaze over while Jonny explains it all to Kyle.

“We’ve lost a lot of our Builders,” Jonny says. Kyle’s eyes get wide, and Jonny holds up a hand. “Not lost as in dead. Lost as in reassigned, moved. Temporarily unavailable.” Kyle still looks a little green. Jonny pauses, tilts his head. “Well, Sasha did get hurt, but he didn’t _die_.”

Sasha, everyone knows full well, broke his wrist his first week in camp, and that was that. “You try focusing long enough to build anything while your whole arm feels like it’s on fire,” Sasha would say to anyone who would listen. And so there was no Sasha, no Adrian, no one.

“Right.” Kyle folds his arms over his chest and frowns. He looks supremely unimpressed with Jonny’s explanation.

“What I’m saying,” Jonny adds, speaking slowly, “is that someone needs to fix things.”

“I.” Kyle starts, stops. Looks at Nick. “I could?”

Nick nods, encouragingly. They could do anything Kyle wanted. Nick’s not going to say no.

“I could,” Kyle repeats, more resolutely. He reaches out and grabs Nick’s hand, laces their fingers together. Nick thinks he stops breathing for a second. Kyle, reaching for him in public, in full view of Jonny or anyone else who comes by, is something wholly new and different. “We could,” Kyle adds. He gives Nick’s fingers a squeeze. Nick smiles so hard his face hurts. “Show us what needs fixed.”

Jonny grins. “Come with me.” He beckons to Nick and Kyle. “We’ll start at the north.”

* * *

Kyle and Nick fix things. That’s what they do.

“We don’t have to,” Nick says. “We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to anymore. You know, right?”

Kyle presses his hand up against the fence he’s trying to mend. The links reform in slow ripples, glowing red-hot and then cooling back into the right shapes. When the fence is done, he steps away and turns to Nick.

“We don’t have to,” Kyle says, “but I think I want to.”

If Kyle wants something, Nick will move land and sea to make it happen. Nick will fight every last Monitor who tries to come for them. If there is anything that Nick desperately wants in his life, it’s to make sure that Kyle is only ever doing what makes him happy.

“Okay,” Nick says. He runs his hand along the fence, pressing against the links Kyle’s fixed, “We’ll stay. We’ll fix things.”

Kyle smiles, a beautiful look that goes all the way to his eyes. Nick can’t even remember the last time he saw Kyle look at him like that.

“Thank you,” Kyle says, and he rises up on his toes, presses a gentle kiss to Nick’s lips.

There are other people around, working, living, existing. And yet there Kyle is, one hand splayed across Nick’s chest, bodies pressed close together as they kiss.

They have a choice, and they are choosing something that Kyle wants. They’ve had precious little choices they’ve been able to make in their lives, and the choices they did make didn’t always end up the way they wanted.

Sometimes, their choices led to them making thousands of rivets for a Tower that barely bothered to make sure they had enough to eat.

With this, at least they’re doing _something_.

* * *

Adrian and Paul come back to camp in a whirl of dust and shouting and chaos, under the cover of darkness.

“The entire western front,” Paul’s saying, gesturing angrily towards the west. “All of it, a waste. Completely covered in armed guards. They’re starting to rebuild. I _told_ you they were going to rebuild.”

There’s a swarm of people gathering around Paul, circling, questioning. Nick recognizes Jeff from around camp, working his way into the middle of the circle, speaking quietly to Paul. This is what Jeff does, Nick supposes: he defuses situations before they can explode, and that’s probably why Paul visibly sags under Jeff’s hand and lets himself be guided away.

Adrian is another story, pacing around the center of camp seemingly on high alert. Nick mostly wants to avoid him, but there’s Jonny, curling one hand around Adrian’s arm. Jonny looks back at Nick and Kyle, with Adrian following his gaze.

They start walking, right for Nick and Kyle.

“Uh,” Nick says, elbowing Kyle in the side. “Incoming?”

Kyle looks up from his work, right as Jonny and Adrian reach them. “What do you want?”

“This is Adrian,” Jonny says, giving Adrian a little shove. A sour look flickers across Adrian’s face as he stumbles forwards. “He thinks he is very talented but we mostly keep him because he’s pretty.”

Adrian frowns even more. He is, to Nick’s great dismay, very pretty, just like Jonny said.

Kyle watches Adrian, practically unblinking. Nick thinks the entire camp could collapse around them and Kyle wouldn’t even move, with the way that he’s doing nothing other than watching Adrian.

“And what do you do?” Adrian asks. He’s already looking around, off in the distance where Jeff is talking with Paul. “What do you do here?”

“We fix things,” Nick says. “Stuff gets broken, and we fix it.”

“Right.”

“What do _you_ do?” Kyle asks.

Adrian tilts his chin up. “I learn things.” He sniffs, gestures at the sea of tents in front of him, bent and battered from the constant sand storms. “You should go fix more things.” Adrian shakes off Jonny’s hand and leaves, making a beeline for the clump of people gathered around Paul.

“He’s kind of an asshole,” Kyle says as Adrian walks away.

Nick realizes this. It’s impossible to miss, really: Adrian, with his smug smile and his attitude problem. Nick has known Adrian for five minutes now and has come to the immediate conclusion that he didn’t like Adrian, but also that they were going to have to either learn to get along or stay out of Adrian’s way.

“I know,” Nick says.

In the distance, Paul throws his head back and laughs at something Jeff’s said. Kyle’s hands curl into loose fists at his side.

“Don’t you think he could be less—” Kyle cuts himself off, then gestures abruptly at Adrian. “Seriously, we have to stay here, with him in camp?”

They don’t. They don’t have to do _anything_. All they have to do is survive. But.

“If Travis and Lawson send us out on scavenger duties, then the next camp’s a week’s walk away,” Nick points out. “At least.” He grinds the toe of his boot into the dirt, working up a pile of red earth before he tamps it back down with his heel. “That is, if Law hasn’t moved where the scavenger camps are.”

Kyle tips his head back. “He’s so loud, is all.”

Nick squints. “He said maybe three words to us.” Adrian seems to spend most of his time pushing thoughts right at Paul. They don’t even need to speak. Nick wonders if that’s something they taught the kids at the Towers. Nick wonders if maybe him and Kyle went to the Tower too late, that they were too old to learn how to do that.

“Not words,” Kyle bites out. There’s an edge to his voice that Nick doesn’t like. It’s an edge that means that any work Kyle tries to do is going to be almost painful in the way he reaches into Nick, takes what he needs. He gestures at Adrian’s retreating form, sketches out a loose shape in the air around him. “His mind. It never stops.”

There’s not anything Nick can do about that. It’s not like he can go to Adrian and say, hey, listen, you think too loud, you push too much energy, it’s making Kyle unhappy, can you stop? Adrian would probably laugh at him.

He is, after all, an asshole.

And maybe that means that Nick’s not loud enough. Nick, who can’t push thoughts at Kyle, who can’t seem to shape his energy the way Adrian and Travis do, the way some of the better Batteries they’ve met can do. Maybe being around Adrian would be easier for Kyle if Nick were just—better.

“We could find Lawson, see what he says,” he offers. He doesn’t really mean it, and Kyle seems to know it, by the dismissive way he snorts, flaps his hand at Nick.

“Right. Going to walk a week to—where? Somewhere?” His words are sharp and Nick isn’t surprised when Kyle turns away. Nick reaches out, resting one hand lightly at Kyle’s elbow.

“We’d be okay at scavenging. We could do it.” Nick feels a little helpless, like he’s digging a hole he’s not going to be able to get back out of. “If you wanted. If you wanted to leave here.”

Kyle snorts, something that’s almost a laugh. “Please. We’re not going to leave.”

“But you said—”

Kyle pulls his arm from Nick’s grasp and turns back around. “He’s _loud_ ,” he says again. “When he’s around, I can’t hear anything else. I can’t feel anything else, in here.” Kyle taps his fingers to his temple.

Kyle stares at Nick, long enough that Nick thinks there’s something he’s supposed to say, something he should do to reassure Kyle that his brain is going to be just fine. He’s coming up with a list of ideas to keep Adrian from being so overwhelming. “We could—”

“He’s so loud that I can’t hear you,” Kyle blurts out. “He walked over, and he overpowered everything. It’s like you weren’t even here any more.” He presses his fingers to his temple again, harder this time. “Drowned out. Like it was before you were even there in the first place.”

“Oh,” Nick breathes out. He wonders if maybe he really could ask Adrian to turn his brain down, just a little bit. Nick knows full well that’s not how it works, but he wants to. For Kyle. Nick reaches out and takes Kyle’s hand, gently curling his fingers around Kyle’s.

“He’s loud, and he’s an asshole, and—” Kyle looks away from their joined hands. He tips his head up and looks at the sky. “I don’t like it when I can’t hear you.”

“Oh,” Nick says again. He lifts Kyle’s hand, slowly, cautiously. When Kyle doesn’t react, doesn’t pull away even, he presses a kiss to Kyle’s knuckles. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “I’ll just learn to be louder, so he can’t bother you like that.”

The barest hint of a smile twitches at the corner of Kyle’s mouth. “I’d like to see you try.”

* * *

Every night, Kyle builds them a skylight in their tent. Sometimes he experiments with shapes, even. Once, he created a circular window which tracked the moon as it slipped through the sky. Kyle’s getting creative in a way he never once was during their years at Twilight Tower, and it makes Nick’s heart feel full every time he thinks about it.

Satisfied with tonight’s skylight—a rectangle cutting across the temporarily flat roof of their tent— Kyle rolls over to curl himself up against Nick.

“Do you think we’re where we’re supposed to be?” he asks.

Kyle asks all the time, and it used to be that Nick didn’t know what the answer should be.

Nick always wanted to be somewhere that felt like home. He never knew what home meant, not really. He knew what home looked like for Kyle, a whole village of people who you stuck with because of blood and tradition, even when they didn’t love you back.

And he knew what home looked like for himself: home was Kyle. Home was wherever Kyle wanted it to be.

Nick never thought that home would look like this: a makeshift tent in the middle of a dirt field, guarded by former soldiers and burnt-out Batteries and people who aren’t quite one thing or the other but who all believe that they can make a world better, more fair, than the Towers ever dreamed of.

Home is a lumpy mattress, it’s Jonny telling obscenity-laden stories of his own time at the Tower, it’s Sasha and Adrian glaring daggers at each other but working together anyway. It’s Lawson and Travis, curled in each other’s arms in front of a bonfire, smiling gently at each other, and no one looking at them twice for it.

“Yes,” Nick says, pressing a kiss to Kyle’s temple, to his cheek, to his jaw. “Yes, this is exactly where we should be.”


End file.
